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Be Ready for some poll swings

It’s not just October surprises

Be ready for some interesting poll swings in the upcoming couple of weeks.

I fully expect that we will see the generic ballot continue to swing towards the GOP and many races solidify squarely into our camp — it’s our year.

However, I fully expect at least one race that is leaning Republican or is a tossup to widen out into a big Democratic lead (or swing from a small GOP lead to a small Democratic lead). It might be in Illinois or Washington or California or even some place we have a reasonable expectation of winning like in West Virginia.

The Democrats are furiously trying to spin narratives into October surprises for the Republicans that will cast us as crazy, racist, stupid, lying something or others. These things are unlikely to work this year, but don’t miss a couple of things that are just going to happen one way or another.

Debates and stupidity

The two remaining factors that could swing things away from Republican candidates are debates and stupidity.

I have always dreaded debates from Bush looking horrible against Gore into the GOP 2008 primary debates where I watched several of my favorites crumple into non-candidates.

The fact is that every once in a while a debate will trip you up. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and people watching the debates will see what WE are seeing since they are looking for faults in the Democratic candidates this year. Perhaps they will see the Blumenthal quote about jobs or the Giannoulis basically saying he knew they were crooks but that he “didn’t know the extent of their activities.”

But some will be looking (maybe in Angle and O’Donnell’s case) for them to say the wrong thing.

And let’s not leave out stupidity. I’m talking here about a Macaca moment (although Allen got a lot of help from the media in youtube) in having that reverberate through the rest of the campaign. Someone, somewhere is going to say something stupid and blow up any momentum that they have in their campaign.

The trust factor

The final bit is what is going to happen on the left coast and in the North East. These people are reflexively Democrat lever pullers. While I agree that undecideds will, for the most part, vote with the Republicans (or stay home), there are a few states where I think they will either ticket split or just do what they always do — vote Democratic and hope that Obama doesn’t screw it up.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line in these last three weeks is to give what you can give, RIGHT NOW and to get your friends pointed at the polls.

Make sure the ones that travel for business vote early or get an absentee ballot.